Susanna Wesley

18 SUSANNA WESLEY.
his mother was distressed to observe that, though
healthy and extremely intelligent, he showed no sign
of talking. This made her very anxious, and the care
of a child who she feared was dumb, as well as the
very natural tenderness for a first-born son, caused
" Sammy," as they called him, to be her favourite, a
predilection which she, as well as others, fully recognised.
In 1691 a little girl was born, and named after
her mother, and in January of the following year
Emilia made her appearance. In April 1693 the
infant Susanna died, making the first break in the
circle. In 1694 twin boys, Annesley and Jedediah,
were born, but died in infancy, and a few months
after their death came another girl,
who was also
named Susanna, and lived to a ripe old age. Mary,
the last born at South Ormsby, through a fall became
deformed and sickly ;
so that it is evident that Mrs.
Wesley's hands were always full and her strength
sorely tried.
It might have been imagined that in this remote
village no social difficulties were likely to arise ;
but
it was not so. The Marquis of Normanby, like many
others of his time, was a man of sadly loose morals,
and kept a " lady '* at a house in South Ormsby. She
took a great fancy to the Rector's pretty wife, and
would fain have been very intimate with her. Mrs.
Wesley, secure in her own position as a happy wife
and mother, does not seem to have harshly discouraged
her fallen sister ;
but her hot-tempered and high-handed
husband was not going to endure it, and, it is averred,
coming in one day when the peccant woman was
sitting with his wife, he handed her out of the house
in a sufficiently peremptory manner. John Wesley
says that this conduct gave such offence to the